


Chasing Those Circles In The Ground

by roachpatrol



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sexual Violence, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 06:11:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/pseuds/roachpatrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>CG: DO YOU WANT ME TO COME OVER?<br/>CA: oh my god really<br/>CG: YEAH. I MEAN, IF THAT WOULDN’T BE WEIRD.<br/>CA: fuckin hell i shoulda got gillpox prevvious if that wwas all itd take for you to accept my standin invvitation to come and hang</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing Those Circles In The Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coldhope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/gifts).



> Thanks to Coldhope for the excuse and Laylah for the editing and encouragement!

__  
I swear you look like you're in jail  
And all at once you're halfway out the door   
One foot dancing, one foot nailed   
To the floor...   


*

CA: kar    
CA: kar help i am dyin ovver here   
CG: WHAT.   
CA: i am actually in fact expirin at this fuckin moment   
CG: SHIT, DID SOMEONE GET REVENGE ON YOU FOR ALL THE LUSUS KILLING? I TOLD YOU, BRO, I SAID IF YOU’RE JUST GOING TO FUCKING PONCE AROUND ON YOUR SKYHORSE KILLING PEOPLE’S CUSTODIANS IN BROAD MOONLIGHT SOME OF THEM ARE GOING TO TAKE A LITTLE UMBRAGE EVENTUALLY.    
CA: wwould you sloww your roll kar, those lusii are my rightful fuckin pound a flesh   
CA: isn’t any a my lookout if lowwblood trash wwant to engage me at the appropriately high-stakes levvel a danger us seahatched aristocrats maintain   
CA: murder runs in my vveins like a fine wwine and frothy slaughter bubbles forth from my fingers like extremely expensive champagne   
CA: the screams a the unwworthy form the vvat in which i fuckin ferment   
CA: their wwails a lament comprise the   
CA: hmm   
CA: leavvening   
CG: THAT ONE’S KIND OF GOTTEN AWAY FROM YOU.   
CA: yeah haha it kinda did   
CG: SO OKAY, EDGING BACK OUT OF DIPSHIT DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR TERRITORY, JUST COMMUNICATE TO ME, ON A SCALE OF LIKE BLOOD OUT THE ASS TO SOME KIND OF SLOW POISON OR SOMETHING    
CG: HOW LONG DO YOU THINK YOU’VE GOT? AND CAN YOU MAIL ME ANY OF YOUR NON-SHITTY TREASURE, LIKE MAYBE THE FEW PIECES OF GOLD YOU HAVEN’T MOLDED INTO WIZARD SEX TOYS.    
CA: okay for your informational purposes   
CG: PORPOISES?   
CA: hahaha yeah for your fuckin porposes i wwas being cunningly overexaggerative to lure out your baser sympathies so THANKS for not havvin any apparently   
CA: im basically just in a lot a physical distress    
CA: and my vvarious concupiscent devices arent shaped like wwizards neither   
CG: WOW TMI   
CA: im just sayin   
CG: WELL STOP SAYING, FUCK. HAVE SOME SHAME. IF YOU’RE JUST SICK OR WHATEVER, WHY AREN’T YOU GLUBBING ABOUT IT TO FEFERI, WHO BY RIGHTS HAS TO AT LEAST FEIGN SOME TINY MODICUM OF CONCERN OVER YOUR HISTRIONIC PURPLE BUTT.   
CA: i got gillpox is all and shed make fun of me for complainin evven tho it really hurts   
CG: GILLPOX.   
CG: IS THAT... A THING.   
CA: you bet your dumb slightly less anonymous blood it is so fuckin a thing and it is a right royal pain   
CA: royal get it   
CA: like you evvidently arent   
CG: YEAH, YEAH, YOU GOT ME, I AM ACTUALLY NOT THE ARCHDUKE OF FUCKNOWHERE ISLAND LIKE YOUR OWN ILLUSTRIOUS BARNACLE-BULGED SELF. IS IT JUST SOME DUMB CRUD YOU CONTRACT FROM SWIMMING AROUND IN THE SAME OCEAN AS EVERY OTHER PANTSWETTING VIOLET WIGGLER OUT THERE OR WHAT?   
CA: pretty much its kind of a rite of passage for us noble types only i dont much like swimmin in the ocean my own self so i put it off as long as i could    
CA: but fef wwas gettin on me about it for good reason so i wwent and picked a fight wwith an old flarp ally   
CA: pain is the reason did i mention i am in a lot of pain i mean like WWOWW   
CG: WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST SKIP IT, I MEAN, SKIPPING IT SOUNDS GREAT, LET’S HEAR IT FOR NOT CONTRACTING HORRIBLE GILL-RELATED DISEASES THAT MAKE YOU WHINE OBNOXIOUSLY TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS WHO DON’T HAVE ANY PERSONAL STAKE IN THE MATTER ON ACCOUNT OF THEY DON’T HAVE ANY GILLS TO SYMPATHIZE WITH YOU ABOUT.    
CA: wwell sure thatd be flippin nice as hell to have avvoided this and i wwould havve if i fuckin could   
CA: but like evvery ship in the fleets probably full wwell rife with it on account a how the bacteria binds with your hormones and shit in an ultimately positive manner wwhich is wwhy its so upright imperative to just grit your dentition and get it ovver wwith wwhile youre young enough not to hemorrhage up your endocrine system and all    
CA: i heard about this one captain wwho nevver got it on planet but when she caught it off her admiral she just wwent and puked up blood on her console till she died and evveryone laughed the wwhole time   
CG: OH.   
CG: HA HA.   
CG: YEAH THAT’S PRETTY FUNNY I GUESS, SERVES HER RIGHT.   
CG: SO HEY, BUDDY. ABOUT THAT PAIN. ARE THERE ANY OTHER SYMPTOMS?   
CA: eh wwell mostly its just your typical fevver type a deal    
CA: aches swweats day terrors nausea    
CA: only your gills itch somethin fierce besides   
CG: DO YOU WANT ME TO COME OVER?   
CA: oh my god really   
CG: YEAH. I MEAN, IF THAT WOULDN’T BE WEIRD.   
CA: fuckin hell i shoulda got gillpox prevvious if that wwas all itd take for you to accept my standin invvitation to come and hang   
CA: i mean i am kinda this big disgustin mess right noww but if youre offerin   
CA: uh   
CA: wwhatever youre offerin wwhat are you offerin here exactly like do you got some kind a illness kink wwe could wwork wwith that   
CG: WOW FUCK YOU NO THIS ISN’T ANY KIND OF SOLICITATION.   
CG: I JUST THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE A LITTLE LESS REPUGNANT IF YOU WERE THROWING UP TOO HARD TO TALK IS ALL.   
CA: haha you are such a fuckin douche   
CG: YOU KNOW IT. DO YOU HAVE MOVIES?   
CA: i got a wwhole personal theatre block in the aft a the ship dude   
CG: WE WILL WATCH SOME MOVIES, AND YOU CAN COMPLAIN ABOUT ALL YOUR PROBABLY FICTIONAL ACHES AND PAINS, AND I WILL PRETEND LIKE I GIVE A FUCK, AND MAYBE WE CAN SHARE SOME SNACKS OR WHATEVER. YOU JUST SOUND LIKE YOU COULD USE A FRIEND RIGHT NOW, OKAY? DON’T MAKE ME REGRET THIS.    
CA: wwoww yeah you got it bro i am signed right the fuck up for this sleepovver   
CG: WAIT, WHO SAID IT WAS A SLEEPOVER?   
CA: i got evvery season a sex an the hivvestem    
CA: on lasergrub   
CG: ITS A SLEEPOVER.

 

*

“Holy fuck, you look like shit,” is the first thing Karkat Vantas ever says to you. Your best friend turns out to be a compact troll with a thick black sweater and a raspy south plains accent who has probably never been near a hairbrush in his life. His horns are tiny. Your heart goes tight and hot, though the rest of you feels much the same way: completely aghast. It’s not exactly hatchmate to the sensation you got when you realized that Feferi Peixes was growing breasts but it’s at least some kind of inclade and you have to grit your knuckles on your rifle and take deep breaths. Are you fucked? You might be a little fucked. Karkat wriggles awkwardly out of the shuttle, cursing and kicking at it while it skitters nervously across your landing deck, and he falls on the wet boards with an impressive smack. The shuttle chitters wildly and takes off. 

“Ow,” is the second thing you ever hear him say, but you don’t think it was specifically directed at you. You heave off the railing, tuck away your strifekind, and go to try and help him up but by the time you’ve reached him your head’s pounding and your gills are throbbing and he’s gotten to his feet just fine. The two of you stand kind of too close together, eying one another up -- can you hug him? Is that a friend thing to do? Outside of combat you don’t touch any other seadwellers besides Fef, it’s not proper, but you’re not really friends with any of them like you’re friends with Kar and he’s not a seadweller at all, is he. You want to touch his wary face, that tense half-frown of his. You’re really out of it, and probably fucked as hell.

You settle for patting his shoulder, and he goes rigid with caution. 

“You can’t catch it,” you tell him, wheezing some. You pat him a little more. “Science.” 

“Okay, cool,” he says, eying you hard. “Are you _sure_ you’re not going to die?”

“You get first lootin’ rights if I do,” you say. 

“Well, that changes everything, where do you keep your knives?” he drawls, and you laugh, and his frown eases up at the corners. Something settles in place, a sense of familiarity. He touches your waist, very carefully, then puts his arm around you. He fits perfectly under your own arm. 

“Let’s get you sat back down,” he says. “It’s cold as fuck out here, you’re probably not doing yourself any favors. Did you sit out the whole time in the rain?”

“It only started precipitatin’ an hour ago,” you mumble, and try not to sniff his hair. You hadn’t really noticed the rain -- you are prickly-hot from your heels to your horns, itchy with sweat and the crawling inflamed throb of your gills. You trimmed your claws down yesterday, filed each one smooth and you regret, it, you really... He guides you into the nearest hatch. 

“Where’s your chow lair?” he wants to know.

“Mmn?”

“Your -- fuck, your kitchen? Pantry? Where the snacks at, bro?”

“You can just say nutrition block, I won’t cull you for it or nothin’. Down this hall, three floors up in the elevator, turn left at the fourth hallway on the right.”

He hauls you along and then whistles, loud and mocking, when he finds it. 

“You gilded your convection compartment,” he hoots. “Wow, I did not think -- your nutrition block is gold leafed. The fuck is wrong with you!”

“‘S actually gold plated,” you say. “Fuck off. I got standards. Get me tea.” 

“I’m making myself some tea, go drown.”

It’s one of the blocks that shares wallspace with the exterior, so you curl up in a viewport seat and rest your forehead against the chill transluminum panes for a while, listening to Karkat rattle around and snicker. He has a cute laugh. He yelps when your tea service whirs into action, unfolding out for him to use, then laughs again. You drift a while. 

“Hey, say please,” he says suddenly. 

“Nyyngh,” you grunt. “Please.”

He puts a mug into your hands. It’s all ice cubes and creamer and honey, and has one of the paper umbrellas you keep around for decorating brightseason sweet drinks. There’s a red tuna cube stuck through the umbrella pick.

“Thanks,” you croak, and sip at it with a profound and fuzzy gratitude. It’s wonderfully cool on your throat. He climbs onto the seat beside you and looks out at the waves.

“I should have brought my custodian,” he says. “I mean, he’d probably chew on you some but I think he’d like the sea. He’s crustacean-kind.” He has a pyramid of tuna cubes on a silver saucer, and he dips them in his own steaming tea till they go from red to pink and he eats them one by one. You kind of wish you’d thought of doing that before. 

He shares one of his cooked cubes with you and it tastes like earl grey. Your stomach roils in protest but you chase the meat down with a swig of watery cold cream and it stays put in your stomach politely. Rain rattles against the window. There’s a bad storm moving in... good. He’ll have to stay longer. You feel like shit and you’re scratching at your gills with your stupid rounded claws right through your shirt but you like this. You like him. He gives you another tuna cube. 

“Those aren’t... they’re not snacks,” you say after a while, after the plate is empty. “Tuna. Urgh. We have -- lemme get. Uh.”

“Wow, you are fucking wasted,” he observes. “Which pantry do I go pillage, dude?”

“‘S in the theatre block,” you say. “All... it’s there. Already.” You flap a hand. He hauls you up to your feet. You just want to sleep but you promised movies and you are fucking going to deliver. 

By the time you’ve managed to direct him to it you’re way sweatier than is any sort of decent and your legs are shaking. You hurt all over.

“Should I call Feferi?” he asks, plopping you down in one of the armchairs. His eyes are wide and you can smell his fear, over your own gross sickness. “Fuck, I mean -- I can go. I should go, this isn’t, uh. You’re not okay. Fuck. I don’t want this to get weird. Are you okay?”

“I feel better,” you lie. “Look, I’m on the mend, you’re fine. Don’t go.” You try and smile, you pat his hand. You’re breathing like you’ve been out hunting all night, battling the storm, you’re so ridiculously overheated. You’re not even wearing your scarf, you don’t know where it is, you fumble your sleeves up to your elbows and wave some air over your face fins. “Come on, you weakass pansy, get us some snacks. I want licorice.”

“Holy fuck, you have licorice?” he asks, distracted. You watch, amused, as he scuffles through your pantry till he finds your stash. “Holy fuck. That’s a lot of allowance to blow on, uh. Snacks.”

You shrug. “I got enough. Bring two bags, okay?”

“Fuck you. I’m bringing three.” He is so transparently not of noble blood you want to die, all bluster and out of his element entirely. You want to bribe him with licorice every night. He pulls over a chair of his own till its arms touch the arms of your own chair and piles the stuff -- licorice dogs and some peppermint mice and some candied fisheyes, he’s got good taste -- up between the two of you in a neat pyramid. He sniffs furtively at the licorice packages when he thinks you’re distracted by scratching and his eyes are so wide and startled. 

You fumble with the remotes and menus till the soothing reverberations of Troll Sarah Jessica Parker having a shootout at a claw maintenance salon are echoing through the block.

“God she’s classy,” Karkat sighs, and rips into the licorice. 

“Pace yourself,” you grunt. “One a us needs to be able’a work the remote.”

“I’ve had this before, man, I’m cool,” he lies badly. The face he makes at the sharp bite of aniseed is gorgeous and you laugh until your airsacs bubble. He coughs and smacks you and you cough harder and try to get yourself back into some semblance of order. You fail, and end up with your head tucked to his shoulder and his hands clawing not very harshly at your hair. 

“You smell like a sinkhole,” he grumbles.

“Shut up,” you say. “Shut up, show’s on.”

He eats another scotty dog. 

*

By season two you’ve had several naps and polished off a bag of licorice apiece and had your guest fetch you back and forth pints of strong milky tea and you are feeling something like decent, in between the thick drowsy swells of unconsciousness. Karkat Vantas has slowly, by some wondrous gradual process, wound up draped across your lap. You pet his hair, when you remember to. It’s hair that hasn’t seen brush nor comb nor styling product, probably ever, and the nap of velvet on his tiny horns is plush and dense. You’re still aching in every joint and itchy around the gills and you have to piss something fierce, especially with his butt pressing down on your particular areas, but you also don’t want to move, ever, and there’s a roiling, lazy heat coiling in your guts that has nothing to do with sickness and everything to do with that butt. 

“No, it’s just,” Karkat says dreamily, and waves a hand. “It’s just. It is just. That. Their hate is so fucking pure.”

“Unsullied,” you agree. You stroke one nubbly horn a bit more and he squirms and sighs and it turns into a wheezy little coughing fit. His eyes are bright and wide and his face glitters in the light of the screen and his mouth is smeared dark and glossy with sweet, sticky anise. 

“You okay, man?” you mumble. “You look... bloody well wrecked. How much did you have?”

“Heh, wwwrecked,” he says, and coughs, wet and rough. “Uh. No, I mean. I’m fine, I. It’s the sea air, I think it’s the sea air. My hivering’s way inland.”

“Barometric pressures can fuck with a guy,” you say. “Science.”

“Mmm,” he says, and struggles upright. “Science. I should go home. I want. I just. The sea air. I should go home, I shouldn’t be here, I’m sorry --”

“No, man, I want you here,” you say. “I want you.”

He just looks at you for a long awful minute. “You shouldn’t,” he says finally. “You’re stupid.”

You lean in and kiss him. His mouth is half-open and tangy and he’s soft against you and opens like an anemone, silky-sticky-electrifying, and he shivers when your tongues touch. Everything’s achingly warm and he puts one half-curled hand on your thigh and the heat in your guts flares up until you’re floating.

“Nuh,” he says muzzily, and you can feel his claws clench against your leg, fuck. “I don’t think -- Eridan, ah.”

“We should’a done this before,” you say, breathing into his mouth, dragging your sticky lips over his again and again and he gives this perfect hard shudder all down the length of his spine and presses up against you, breathing hard, and you just... _kiss_ , sleepy and stupid and sweat-damp, learning the shape of each other’s teeth, each other’s tongues. 

“I’m sorry,” he says finally, hoarsely, and twists away to tuck his head beneath your chin. He’s shivering all over, sweaty as you are. He gives a little cough. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“You’re perfect,” you say, giddy with revelation. “Karkat, bro, I think I fuckin’ love you, man, think I have for a while, the fuck do you have to apologize for?”

“I’m sorry,” he just says again, only fainter. “I should...go...” When you kiss the back of his neck he is limp and unresponsive. 

“Kar?” you ask, alarmed. “Karkat?”

“Nnn,” he goes, and sort of flops. He is completely passed out. 

You have no idea what to do.

*

CA: fef wwhat do i do karkat fell asleep on me   
CA: wwe wwere kissin and it wwas great and then he fell asleep   
CC: W)(ale then, go to bed, you s)(elly ass!    
CA: shelly   
CC: Silly!   
CA: oh   
CA: ok   
CC: And drink some water.    
CA: yeah   
CC: And brush your teet)(!   
CA: right   
CC: You’ve got gillpox, don’t you?   
CA: wwhat   
CC: You’re never obedient unless you’re sick!   
CA: correction your highness   
CA: i haddock gill pox    
CA: past tense so there   
CC: Did you give it to Karkrab?   
CA: nah it turns out hes some other part a the population as doesnt happen to havve gills    
CC: )(ee )(ee you were kissing a landdweller.   
CA: you knoww wwhat i cant be shamed fef   
CA: nor can i be glubbin tamed

*

CA: OH MY COD FEF HES GOT GILLS   
CC: W)(AT.

*

You kneel beside Karkat’s prone body, palmpirate clutched to your chest. His sweater and tshirt are rucked up from where you’d pulled them and you can see just the lowest slice of dark gill cover, riddled with blisters like pink pearls. Your brain is a hot blank mess and your fins are prickly and your hands are all clammy and you want to sort of climb back into your chair and put on season three. You want none of this to have happened.

He makes a low, dazed whimper, eyelashes fluttering, and goes into hacking convulsions. You’ve never heard of a case of gillpox progressing so fast but that is definitely what he’s got. 

“Oh shit,” you say. “Oh shit, oh shit.” 

You pat his shoulder while he coughs, and when he doesn’t stop coughing you pull him into your lap and pet helplessly at his rough, tangled hair. Then he makes an ominous _hhrk_ noise and vomits bloody froth and a half-digested bag of licorice scotty dogs on your knee. 

"Shit," you say, gagging, and drop him on the carpet again. You get your pants off as gingerly as you can while he's retching, use the clean leg to try and scrub at his face when it seems like he's done. 

“Okay,” you say, and swallow hard. “Okay, let’s get to the bathroom.”

You haul him to the closest ablution chamber and dump him facedown in the tub. Then you awkwardly use the load gaper while he’s heaving, which is humiliating and terrifying and everything smells terrible and also terribly of licorice. You’re not going to be getting blitzed again for a _long_ while. 

“Fuck,” you moan, “fuck fuck fuckin’ _hell_ on a stick.”

You do up your underwear, flush, and then take your shirt off, and your glasses. You gotta clean this mess up somehow -- you clamber awkwardly into the tub and flip the sprayhead on, you gather Karkat’s small shuddering body up into your arms, you try and get his clinging-wet sweater off. He’s burning hot and he fights you, sharp convulsive pushes like a squirmy crab in cupped palms. 

In the bathroom light, even under the obscuring spray of water, he’s flushed pink as raw tuna. His gillslits flare with his coughs, beading ruby along the covers with the blood-blisters of gill-pox, and the puffy, swollen combs of his filaments gape an unreal crimson. When you prod a blister it pops, smears a delicate lacework of pink-on-gray down his side. He gives a shaky, pathetic whimper and thrashes nearly out of your grip at that, you have to brace your legs against the trap and heave him back under the spray. He goes into convulsions again, folded over and miserable. 

When you brush the wet, tangled locks of his shaggy hair away from his jawline, he has two fine pale seams where his fins should be. 

Then you’re gagging, dropping him to turn and hunch over the drain and you shake and heave till you burn. His fins. His fins got cut off. 

Karkat squirms out of the tub. 

“Home,” he slurs. “I gotta...” He tries to stand and he can’t quite make it and he’s a mutant, his blood is a weird jelly-crimson and his fins are gone and he’s sicker than you’ve seen anyone be. 

He makes it to his feet. He wipes his wet mouth with the back of his wet hand, and his eyes are glazed and aimless. A rustblood, a _red_ blood landdwelling seatroll who lives in the south plains... he has no built-up immunity to seaborn pathogens. No wonder. No wonder. He’ll probably die even if you didn’t cull him yourself. Madam Nature herself is taking him out of the running. 

He stares at you staring at him and you don’t have any words, you are one big headache. You touched him. You kissed him. You still want to kiss him, you’re wiping your mouth and you feel like thirteen kinds of boiled shit, sick and dirty and scared. Why do you fall in love with the worst possible people? Your best friend’s a mutant, you just made out with a freak of nature. You didn’t expect anything to hurt so much. 

He sways, dangerously, and you scramble out of the tub to catch him. He steadies against you, wheezing and snuffling. 

“Did you,” he says with effort. “Did. Did you.”

“Easy, bro, easy--”

“Did you tell anyone. Yet.”

You go still. “No, a’course not.”

“Okay,” he says. He shifts backwards, you both sort of fumble awkwardly till he’s leaning against the sink. He snuffs, hard, through his nasals, and wraps his arms around his twitching, spotty, bright red gills. 

“I don’t want to die,” he says thickly. “I’m sorry. I just. I don’t want to die.”

He looks so fucking pathetic -- you lean in, you hug him. You want to kiss him so badly, you want to fucking lay him down in thick sopor and cover his lithe frame with your own and kiss him till he’s calm, till he’s unafraid and laughing. 

“I won’t tell,” you say. You don’t know what you’re saying, it just comes out, desperate and stupid, “I w-won’t tell anyone, Kar, come on, man, we’re friends, aren’t we friends? I’ll keep you safe, forever, I’ll, I’ll hide you away or somethin’, I’ll keep your secret, I’ll keep you safe...” 

His hands come up to your shoulders like scared squeakbeasts, and he shivers. 

“I don’t want to die,” he says again. “I’m sorry, I just. I’m sorry.” He looks so out of it, so flushed and fragile, still dripping wet from the shower. He wipes one hand awkwardly down your face and your heart hurts. 

“Nothin’ to be sorry about,” you murmur, and his lips are so close to yours -- you were just hurling your mutual guts up a moment ago, he’s a filthy fucking deviant, a freak, this shouldn’t be so hot -- one more inch and you could have him.

You feel the cold sharp line of a blade at the back of your neck one scant moment after you hear the tell-tale pop of an equipped strifekind. Sheer instinct has you lashing out, knocking his arm aside and twisting out of the way, and it’s still a close enough call that the cold line across your neck goes white-hot with pain as the sickle’s point drags through your flesh. You can feel blood sheeting down your back as you scramble away, you can feel the pain sting up into the back of your eyeballs. 

“Karkat, what the fuck --”

Karkat gives a low, ugly snarl, and lunges for you. This bathroom isn’t one of your larger ones, practically just a closet off the theatre block with a tub and toilet, and in the confined space you can hardly get away. He rakes a blazing line across your shoulder, then down and across your hip when you turn to run. The point of his sickle is wickedly sharp, which is actually to your advantage when it hooks into your shorts. It slices through the fabric and, bare-assed and reeling, the two of you spill out into the hall. You’re still exhausted from your sickness and he’s obviously fucked up from his, and it’s a sad shambling farce of a chase down the hall. You’re no close-range fighter, no brawler or Threshecutioner hopeful, your instincts are _screaming_ at you to get some space.

You’re a few floors up from the top deck, you think -- you’ve got a bigger theatre block down at water level but it’s cold, you didn’t want to use it with Karkat, he’s a landdweller, fuck, fuck -- and you bolt around one corner, clip another, hard, and make it to a look-out block with what would be a great sniper’s view of the more invadable parts of your beachfront if it weren’t pissing down rain. 

You shove open a porthole and lean out.

“Help!” you scream, and twist awkwardly. “ _Incitatus!_ ” There should be a ladder here. It is unfortunately on the porthole at the far side of the room. If your custodian’s sleeping in the rigging -- if he can hear you-- he is. He does. 

“Dad,” you moan with relief, and wrap your arms around his neck when he snuffs your tear-streaked face. Your growth curve’s been steeper than his lately, it’s not like when you were five or six and hardly a bother, and he nickers and squirms when you try to get him to take your weight. You scrabble at his fins but this unbalanced and rattled you can’t manage to equip his tack, and he doesn’t want you climbing on bare-backed. 

Karkat grabs your ankle. 

You shout and kick out at him, panicked, and Incitatus finally deigns to take the situation seriously. He spins and plunges, snorting, settling you on his back, and when Karkat’s drawn half out of the porthole to swipe at you your custodian clamps his fangs firmly down on your friend’s nape. Karkat yelps as he’s hauled nearly out of the window and Incitatus nickers wetly and you dig your heels into your lusus’s sides to get him to let go, worried he’s going to yank Karkat all the way out, that he’ll fall, that he’ll die. He claws your lusus across his soft nose and pops back inside the porthole frame.

Your eyes meet, then, and Karkat’s own narrow with anger. He snarls at you. The rain plasters his already-wet hair across his face in black fangs, down the sides of his face where his fins should be flaring. 

“One of us is going to have to kill the other,” he shouts, through the storm. You’re a scant arm’s length apart. He’s heaving for breath. He coughs, awful racking spasms that roll his eyes back, slump him against the porthole frame, and he fixes you again with that glare. “You called the drones in yet, Ampora?”

“We can talk,” you plead. “Let’s talk, Kar, love--”

He throws his sickle at you. It somehow hurts more that it falls short, he’s so sick-looking, he’s so weak.

“There are guns in this room,” he rasps. “You put guns in this room. Your fucking hive’s lousy with guns. Do they work?”

Your throat really hurts. “Yeah,” you say. 

The sick rings around his eyes are so pink, and he looks at you for such a long, awful moment. “I don’t want to die,” he says finally, and his nose is a scrunch and his hands fist at his side. 

He backs away, one step, two, and you wheel your lusus around and kick him up towards the sky. 

*

CA: FEF YOU GOTTA HELP ME   
CA: FEF  
CA: FEFERI BLOODY PEIXES I AM UPRIGHT FREAKIN THE FUCK OUT HERE PICK UP THE HUSK  
CC: Ug)(, Eridan, can it wait? I’m kind of in the MIDDL--E OF SOM--EFIN!  
CA: NO IT BLOODY WWELL CAN’T I AM HAVVIN AN EXTREMELY BIG EMOTIONAL CRISIS   
CC: You’re BLOODY ALWAYS )(aving an extremely big emotional crisis!  
CC: Did Karcrab not put out or W)(AT.   
CA: wwell okay yes shore he has not yet technically put out but  
CC: I’m going to put Vriska on.  
CA: oh my cod fef im havvin a full bore catastrophe from the mouth a hades ovver here and youre off hangin around with VVRIS??   
CC: Also, touching 8oo8bs.   
CA: oh my flippin cod  
CC: So hey, wow, you’ve 8een putting the moves on Karkat?  
CC: What was it like, did he cry? Did you cry? I have a 8et with Captor.   
CA: not that it is any of your business marquese mindfuck but it wwas extremely romantic   
CA: wwe had a moment  
CC: Princess Hotstuff says you pro8ably cried.   
CA: wwhat no i didnt fef what the hell  
CC: Vriska’s just being a s)(it! Ignore t)(at, )(ee )(ee.   
CA: you got some terrible ass taste in the ladies fef  
CC: Yeah 8ut she’s got some great ass taste in lady’s asses, let me tell you!  
CA: wwoww no dont  
CC: You’re too easy, Orphaner. 8ack on track now! Karkat came over to your place to sneakily contract gillpox and then take off. Now you know his secret he’s hunting you down through your own hive 8efore he goes 8ack to his own?   
CC: That question mark was just there for grammar, I know I’m right. You’re 8asically screwed up the nook with a reaverhog. Karkat’s admira8ly lethal for such a nu88y 8undle of neurosis.  
CA: but howw did you knoww hes a mutant  
CC: Eridan, you dipshit! Evvvvvvvveryone knows Karkat’s a mutant. He’s only taken out like half the kids in his hivering to protect himself! Why do you think he never made a play for Terezi?   
CA: wwait he liked pyrope  
CC: Dang, you are just too dum8 to live. I’m outies.   
CA: no wwait you havve to givve me some kind a advvice you fuckin bitch you cant just leavve me like this  
CC: 8n’t gotta do shit, you preposterously self-absor8ed dipfuck!  
CA: please vvris im beggin you   
CA: on feferis behalf i mean like do you really wwant to go an leavve her bereavved  
CC: 8ereefed?  
CA: fuck you  
CC: Kill him if you can.   
CA: but i don’t wwant to i lovve him  
CC: That’s your hilarious pro8lem, then!  
CC: Au revoir, Orphaner. I got a hot 8a8e to go romance some more. 

You curl into yourself in the calcified remains of your ship’s ancient crow’s nest. You’re cold and tired, and the rain doesn’t do enough to soothe the hot sting of your eyes. You bring up your hivemap tracking app on your palmpirate. Karkat’s bright white dot shows up in one of your auxiliary armories a floor up from the viewing window. He’s either figured out how to bypass your elevators’ genetic imprint passcode -- your blood, he could have smeared your blood to the thumbplate -- or found the secret hatchways. You’re not sure which is worse. 

He hasn’t gone that far, though, and most of the distance vertical. There’s five more defensible rooms between where he was and where he’s holed up.

His dot isn’t moving. 

You wipe your eyes, refresh the app. He hasn’t moved. 

“Come on, Kar,” you mutter. Refresh the app. “Come on.” He’s not even in the corner of the room, he’s a few steps, maybe, from the doorway. A trap? Or he’s passed out. You’ve been sleeping so much, yourself, and he passed out earlier. And he’s so small...

The white mark of an intrusive presence wouldn’t go away until his body had cooled below the baseline temperature of tyrian, below any living troll’s, and his blood is red. 

You put away your husktop, whistle to your lusus. 

*

Karkat is curled in a loose curve on the floor of your treasury, limp and shivering. A rifle’s tucked under one arm -- Teach’s Last Lesson, you recognize, a nice light precision shot but worthless to a kid with no firearms training -- and he’s got a wickedly rusty scimitar clutched in one hand. He must have dug up one of Vriska’s old prop blades, attracted to the familiar crescent shape. His eyes are glassy orange slits, his mouth slack and dripping crimson. When he hears you he heaves upwards, painfully, his shoulders rising just a ways from the floor and then crashing back down, and you regret donning full hunting regalia to see how he trembles before you. You could have at least left off the cape. He squirms painfully. His gills are inflamed to the point of looking like slices of crimson brain coral, smearing awful stains across your floor. You’ve never seen anything so nasty.

“Kar,” you say hesitantly, and let the barrel of your Crosshairs dip. 

He rolls over and aims the sword-tip at you. You can see his forefinger scrabble along the hilt as, confused, racked with coughing and half-blind with tears, he tries to shoot you with the wrong weapon. You are fucked: he is so small, and so fierce, and you pity him so dearly. His pain, the way he falters piece by desperately reluctant piece, is a hook sunk deep into your heart. The clatter of the blade to the floor, the moist smack of his face as he goes limp, yanks you to his side. He coughs like he is ripping into pieces. Blood and worse drips from between his gritted teeth.

You pull the gun and the sword from his stubborn, shivering claws, and you bundle him tight against you. Your gills sting at the pressure and you ache down to every link of your vertebral chute, you stumble and knock his ankles into the door frame, but you’re up and moving and determined. You have to save him. 

You have a Primary Maintenance kit at the junction of every hallway, neatly hidden in the wall panelling and always refreshed after use: a nervous wiggler paranoia long borne out as good solid sense. An Orphaner’s job doesn’t get him many nonlethal accolades, and you’ve been subject to more than a few hive invasions. You don’t know if you wish Karkat were still chasing you around, but you certainly wish he were well enough to. He can’t even hold his head up, though he turns his head just enough to dig his crusty teeth into your bicep, and he chews on you while you stumble off to one of your parlors. 

“Quit it,” you complain, joggling him. He shakes his head back and forth, savage and stubborn, and rips a little tear in your cape. “ _Quit_ it.”

The first thing you do when you’ve got him splayed out on a low, comfortable divan is crush a relaxant down his foodchute, and get your knuckles bit raw for your troubles. 

“Easy,” you soothe, “Easy, Kar, easy, shh.”

You touch his gulping throat, you clumsily stroke the mad flutter of his pulse underneath his jaw and try not to look at the little glimpses of scar tissue you can see through his messy hair. Your head throbs with tiredness, with tenderness. Has anyone touched him like this? Are you the first to see him as he really is without trying to kill him for it? How could anyone see what he is and not pity for him, but _oh,_ does this mean he’s yours and yours only? God, you can only hope.

His gills are such a mess. At the first brush of anti-inflammatory paste he moans, low and gargling, shoves at you convulsively. You try to coordinate stroking his cheek with applying the paste and get confused, he thrashes a little and you get more paste on the divan than his body. You want to curl up and sleep with him so badly you can feel it dragging at the back of your eyesockets. You don’t understand how he can be so fucked up and still struggle onwards, making your life hard, making his own life hard. When he coughs and your fingers press too hard at his spasming gill tissue he lets out terrible splinters of noise, not quite words, not quite cries. 

“Please,” he finally gets out. His pupils are rolled practically all the way back in his head, he’s convulsing. His voice is a mangled shred, he’s bitten his tongue. His claws scrape at you, fitful, weak. “Please, please don’t, let me go, please don’t cull me, it hurts, please--”

“I’m just patchin’ you up,” you tell him, and press a kiss to his gross sticky cheek. His cough rattles your earfin. “Easy, now. We’ll get you whole again, I’m tryin’ to help you.”

“I don’t want to die, please,” he says again, and starts to sob in between coughing jags. 

“You’re not gonna,” you say. “You won’t, you won’t.”

“ _Please_.”

You cram more sedative into him. He doesn’t even bite.

It takes forever to rub his gills clean and clear and treated, to wipe the filth and sickness from his body. He’s slick with sweat and bawling with misery by the end, loud and shameless and terrified, begging hoarse and wobbly for his absent lusus. He needs sopor. You need sopor. Your arms shake when you try to lift him up. You’re at the very limits of your capacity to do sweet fuck-all.

You curl up with him on the couch, an arm low around his waist, and rest your eyes. 

*

You wake up fast and confused when your horns hit tile. He’s shoved you half off the couch and is swarming up -- down?-- your body, breathing hard and snarling. 

“Kar--” you get out, before his hands find your throat. At this angle he doesn’t have to squeeze, just lean. You choke and gape and smack at his face, but he just tucks his head and keeps on. 

You’re still stronger than him, bigger, and even confused and airless you’re a lot farther along the healing curve than him. He’s rosy all down to his chest and dripping with sweat, and his orangey eyes look straight through you. He’s delirious. You set your feet firmly against the couch and flip the both of you over. 

“You’re having a sleep-fright!” you shout at him.

“I’ll kill you!” he screams, tearing at your cape, at your shirt. His claws are like sickles themselves, wicked-sharp hooks that catch and shred. “Come at me, motherfuckers, I’ll kill you all, you won’t take me alive!”

You slap him, like how it works in movies to get someone to calm their tits, but instead he just screams again and lunges up to ram your face with his blunt horns. One gets you right under the eyesocket and there’s a crack that makes your vision go silver-sparkly. It hurts amazingly. He squirms out from under you while you’re swearing and blinking and _where did he get that cutlass from?_

Fingers scrabble at your shirt as you dodge the sweep of that deadly blade, claws slide agonizingly up into the slit of one of your exposed gills and _YANK._

You go blank with agony, and he flips you back to the floor as easily as landing a caught fish. He climbs on top of you, hacking and panting, stretches you out. Your savaged gillslit, still so raw and tender from half-healed lesions, is a pounding, relentless war drum of pain through your spine and guts and you are caught, you are helpless, your tormentor’s eyes bleary-red, glittering with fever and murderous intent, and his damp fingers fumble a final time around your throat. He raises the cutlass. You have never been so scared in your life and you have never been so inappropriately turned on and he’s--

He’s. 

Wow. Well, then. You arch your hips up, under his bare ass, and he makes a ragged, confused little snarl, rocking back against you and his fingers tighten further around your neck. You chirp at him, cautious, kind of trembling, and reach down to press a palm between his thighs. 

The blade clatters down beside your head and then everything is a rough, dizzying blur of force and motion: he’s rocking against you, the pressure of his ass, his thighs, maddening against your trapped bulge and the clash of his teeth like hail against yours, like lightning, his sweet high warbling response and his claws twisting up your body, stripping you bare. The pain in your side’s gone electric-sweet so long as he doesn’t stop moving, and he doesn’t. 

You squeeze the wet twist of his unsheathed bulge and he keens, whining confused and loud and eager and you figure if you’re going to die you might as well thoroughly enjoy him and you lace the slick length back and forth between your fingers like you’ve read about in porn and it makes him writhe -- your mouth is so dry and if he doesn’t stop rocking back against your bulge like that you’re going to completely humiliate yourself. 

More than being completely dominated by your mutant best friend is humiliating and _oh god_ he’s clawing your pants off too. You had no idea you could keen so loudly. 

You let him slide back between your legs with this peculiar kind of stupid, desperate horror: he feels so warm, he feels so good, when he pushes into you, and he feels unfairly huge for such a small guy, it’s probably true what they say about lowbloods getting hung like the livestock they are because it feels like he’s going to split you apart, you’re getting fucking plowed by a landdweller -- a landdwelling seadweller -- a freak-blooded mutant with hot palms and red gills and a giant fucking bulge and nothing has ever felt better and things are starting to get vague, get heavy and disjointed. 

You claw at him as he kneads at your throat, strangling your moans into wet, gross sounding hiccups and gasps, and he shrugs off your blunted clawnubs like you’re not even a thing and drives into you till you see stars. You can’t breathe and every gillslit you have, even the ripped one, is flared out stupid-desperate and you just need more, every stroke of his bulge inside you or slide of his stomach against your own bulge just electrifies you. You’re chirping his name choked-off and soundless, nearly squeaking, holding his wrists, promising him anything, anything at all, you love him so much you feel like you could die of it, just rip to pieces.

He comes in a long loud shuddering wave that catches you up as well, and you are lost and sundered and insane. You hold him close and squirm and beg, through the aftershocks, panting and rocking through every scrap of pleasure you can get from him has faded into itch and a chilly, dawning embarrassment. 

You ease out from under him. You are sticky and wet and cold, which is not what you thought not being a virgin anymore would be like at all. The slurry on the floor is swirled with crimson, not blue, not purple, not... not tyrian. Your head hurts, and your spine hurts, and your gills hurt, and your bones hurt, and your nook hurts. Your throat really really really hurts. Your gillslit is definitely still bleeding, you’re probably going to need a dermal patch. His gills are looking a little better, from the paste and the rest, but are nowhere near healthy. 

“Okay,” you say out loud. Your voice is still pitched astonishingly high. “That was a thing. That was... a thing.”

You don’t faint, but you come really close for a minute. You look at the muzzy little bundle of naked, panting Karkat sprawled in your lap and you kind of look at your life, and your choices. They are all really bad. 

Karkat starts crying again, weakly, deliriously, his face pressed sticky and gross to the crook of your thigh. This is not at all what you figured your first time would be, and you feel an increasingly fervent sense of betrayal. If your life was a movie you would burn down the set and shoot all the attendants. 

You get shakily to your feet, arms around Karkat’s chest. He drapes limply over your shoulder, massively out of it, and you feel crammed to nausea with a complicated unhappiness. You can’t go back now. You can’t care what color he is, what color came out of him, how painful and disappointing this all was because even now your heart kicks at you with how much you love him and pity him and how right it feels to hold him close. You can’t go back to not knowing all this, not feeling all this. You wouldn’t. 

_Food,_ you think, and your stomach yawns achingly. Food, god, yes, you’re starving, you haven’t eaten anything in at least a night, two nights, and nothing before your snack binge. Karkat’s been puking, he’s been running on nonexistent reserves, he’s all bones and barbed wire. 

You think... you pull up your hiveschema application. There’s a little mealblock near here attached to an auxiliary bolthole, two small rooms in the weird triangular space between a shooting range and a treasury vault. 

It’s not far at all to drag Karkat, even if you’re sick nearly to screaming of carrying him around your hive like a sack of loot. Loot that wakes up while you’re trying to pull the pins on a couple of instant noodle pods and bites your tender earfin. 

“Would you quit it,” you say, and are ashamed that your voice comes out wobbly with tears. It hurts badly, one more ache on top of too many, you’re so tired of fighting. 

He trembles, in your arms, and then slowly his jaw relaxes. He coughs and coughs and is almost asleep by the time you set him down at the little meal plateau. His face flops to the table and he stares at the noodle pod you put in front of him like it’s of no more relevance to him than a piece of driftwood. 

“It’s food,” you say, curt. “Tuck in.”

His lip twitches up, just a bit, and he looks like he’s about to pass out to spite you. 

“Karkat _VANTAS_ ,” you shout, and you slam your fists to the ebon slab hard enough to make it crackle. “I HAVE HAD A HEAPIN’ HELPIN’ A _ENOUGH_ A YOUR MUTINOUS FUCKIN’ OINKWASH! YOU ARE GOING TO EAT THOSE NOODLES, SO HELP ME GOD.”

He doesn’t even startle. He just glares up through puffy lids. 

“Or what, Orphaner?” he sneers. “You’ll _kill_ me?” He manages to cock his horns back at you, even with his cheek smeared against the tabletop.

You sit back into your chair, and you take your own noodle pod, and for a number of really terrible reasons instead of opening it up you start crying. 

At that Karkat startles. “Hey,” he says, and you put your hands up to your face and stumble back out of your chair. You don’t have anywhere particularly to go, so you just end up standing by the table with your hands over your mouth and your back to this kid that just pailed you, that still wants to die or kill you, that could die and die horribly, that won’t listen, that you love, that still hasn’t said anything about loving you back. The two of you have cried too much and kissed too little, these last nights, and it hurts, it hurts so badly. 

“What -- Eridan, you failmongering waste, stop,” he says, and you hear the scrape of his chair, his unsteady footsteps. 

He touches your shoulder and you tense, you cringe, you can’t help it. You’re expecting a blade, where he’s cut you along your neck and hip still sting. 

Instead he just turns you around, hesitant and almost gentle, and you stumble back against the table. You are horribly aware of how awful this all is, how you can’t stop crying, how ugly each sob sounds, how gross you are with your pants still sticky and reeking across the crotch, your shirt all stretched out and tattered. 

“Fuck’s sake. I’m sorry,” he says, and he touches your hands where they press against your mouth. He’s naked and stained before you, and shaking all over. His head hangs like he’s forgotten how to work his neck. “Please don’t cry.”

“You’ve been crying all night!” you accuse breathlessly. 

“Well, it’s manly when I do it!” he says, and you can’t help laughing even through the tears. It stings, laughing like this. It smarts to see his watery, worried little smile. 

“I’m not going to call the drones,” you say, and that smile drops right off his flap. “I love you.”

“You’re going to die.”

You sob again, you can’t help it, and you hate yourself for it. You have no answer for him. 

“Oh, you stupid, stupid bastard,” he says, and he lets his head rest against your shoulder. 

“Do you even like me?” you choke out, and you wrap your arms around him and hold him close, you hug him and nuzzle his hair and feel with every inch of your hide all the places he could put a knife in you. “I’ll die for you, Kar, swear it, I’ll die for you, you have to tell me.”

“Fuck you,” he says. “I love you back, you blubbering goddamn flounder.”

It’s like getting stabbed, only in a good way. It’s like getting shot right in your feelings. Everything in you goes blank and white-hot and wondering. 

“Thank you,” you say stupidly. 

He laughs at that, sounding kind of weepy himself, and puts his arms around you. 

“Noodles,” he finally rasps out. “Gimme.”

You pour him back into his chair and show him how to open the pod. They’re trail rations, self-heating and gooey with nutritious mucilage. Easy on the digestion sac. You’ve eaten enough of them on hunts that the taste barely registers by now, but his eyes go wide and he gulps it down eagerly. You’re relieved beyond words that even with everything else that’s gone wrong he’s at least not laid out with too much of the nausea you had to deal with in your own round of pox. You slam back your own pod and go to heat up two more, but by the time you get back to the table he’s asleep again, completely gone, face pillowed on his arms and almost peaceful. He’s not handsome by any possible definition: he’s got a strikingly odd jumble of features. His snout has a seadweller’s neat and proper curve but it’s too big, his eyebrows are arched but too thick, his fangs are nicely even but lowblood-blunt. He’s a phrenologist’s keysmash. He’s beautiful. 

You drink both the pods yourself, then hoist him back over your shoulder. It’s starting to feel comfortable with familiarity.   
You don’t remember making it to the spare recuperacoon, only Karkat, turning over in the slime, his hand folding into yours. 

*

Consciousness comes with a faint, tantalizing sense of pleasure, and you shift around blindly in the sopor. It’s warm as a dimseason’s sweet southern breeze and oh, _nice_ , there’s a wonderful teasing pressure against just the tip of your bulge. You roll sleepily towards it, straining a bit, and then there’s a hook and a shock of connection and you have a mouthful of Karkat’s hair. You put your arms around his slim little body and nuzzle till you have a mouthful of horn-velvet instead, roll your tongue carefully along that rounded tip. 

“Oh,” he sighs, and rolls his hips and you whimper at the slide of your bulges twined together, slick as dreaming in the slime and you don’t remember getting naked but it was the best possible tactical decision anyone could have made. Karkat nuzzles your shoulder, chirping “oh god, oh, _shit_ ,” in this wonderfully taut breathless way voice and everything is so _unbearably_ nice. You crane your neck to lick at his horn and it tastes sharply of slime and makes the boy in your arms shudder all over, warbling, and you croon back because fuck, because yes. 

“Eridan,” he warbles, almost clearly, and then goes into a racking spasms of coughs that rattle the both of you. By the time he draws a clear breath his bulge has entirely retreated and yours is left coiling aimlessly against the unforgiving angle of his hipbone. 

“Shit,” you whine, still too sleepy to really think before you talk, “c’n I put my bulge in you?”

He sits up, looks down at you. “No,” he says, challengingly, and if his voice is still high it’s also half-growl.

You process this. “Okay,” you say, and try to reach a hand down to relieve yourself. You just brushed up against a lot of death in the last little while and even if you did get deflowered somewhere along the way your body’s still letting you know loud and clear that it wants to produce some fucking slurry already. But Karkat just catches your wrist, and when you moan in protest he glares down all ferocious. 

“What if I didn’t want you to put it in me, _ever_?” he asks.

You blink. “Well, whatever sails your ship, Kar,” you say, puzzled, “but you just rammed me somethin’ ferocious and it didn’t really feel bad or anythin’. What’s your problem?”

He’s still glaring. “As long as you’re alive, I’m alive on your sufferance,” he says. “That’s my problem. How am I supposed to believe you’re not going to fucking pin me out for the drones the first time we have a fight?”

Maybe it’s just because your bulge is starting to ache with desperation, but you snarl, low and pissed off, and Karkat’s eyes go wide. 

“Karkat bloody Vantas, I have no flippin’ idea how you missed this but we have _been_ havin’ a fight, and you pulped my ass in every round! Now you can call the drones in yourself and make out with them when they show up for all I care but let go of my fuckin’ arm, you disagreeable little monster, I want to drain my pipes and go the hell back to sleep.”

“Oh,” Karkat says. He’s kind of pink now, and breathing hard. It’s adorable and does nothing to calm you. He licks his lips, awkwardly, coughs a few times, and lets go of your wrist. “Okay, I. Yes. Go ahead.”

“Thanks ever so,” you say acidly, and he goes a darker red. He sits on your thighs and watches you and you can’t really stay mad at him on account of he’s so fucking cute and your hand around your bulge is satisfying. You work your length fast and hard and wish that he’d shift down you a little further so you could get your other hand into the hungry throb of your nook.

Then you bump knuckles. 

“Can I?” he asks quietly, and runs his fingers over yours, over your squirming, eager bulge. 

You glare at him. “What if _I_ said no?” you snap.

He hunches into himself. “Fuck, sorry,” he says miserably, “I can go, I’m sorry,” and it melts the last of your anger. 

“Can we just....” you sigh. “Can we just make each other feel nice? It’s love, isn’t it, can’t I just love you? I don’t want us to be mad.”

He shivers, and closes his eyes tight. 

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I -- I -- I want that. Fuck. I do.”

You gather him back down against you and when his face finds the crook of your shoulder he presses a shy sharp nip to your fin, then a kiss. His fingers touch your bulge and oh, it’s not enough, it’s perfect, you chirp like a mad thing, squirming up against him all over. 

“More,” you beg, “More, hnn, c’mon, w-would you fuckin’ move --”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” he says, but soft. Indulgent. His fingers move on you slowly, exploring. He’s too slimy from sopor for you to feel the callus to his fingerpads, but you can feel the iron strength in them, and the warmth. He touches you too slowly to bear. 

You pop him on the shoulder with a weak fist. “Would you just -- a-ahh -- Karkat, _PLEASE_ \--”

He surges up against you, covers you with his body again all in one lithe combative slide. “I wanna fuck you again,” he says, and you can feel his bulge slide against yours for one tingling unbearable moment before he pulls his hips tantalizingly up and away. 

“Don’t make me beg any more,” you plead, pulling at the small of his back. “C’mon, do it, have me.”

He makes the most delicious hungry noise, then he’s in you, again, and your toes curl.

“God,” he says breathlessly. “You’re. Ahh. Wow.”

“Fuck,” you keen, clawing at him, almost mindless with want. “Fuck fuck fuckin’ yes, I, I want, can I, can I please, Kar --”

“Yeah, do it,” he moans back, “I want you to, I do,” and you manage to slide your own bulge up, around, he’s boiling-warm inside and so perfect. He fucks you sloppy-wet from slime, kissing at your neck, ferocious and hungry and yours. He’s been through a lot of hurt, too, he’s magnificent, you’ve never touched yourself like this, never been able to reach back so far with just your fingers and toys aren’t the same, you’re realizing that now, nothing’s the same as actually being touched by someone you care so badly for. 

“Kar,” you wail, and your voice is nothing but noise, you are nothing but desperation, you’re so sensitive, and you don’t think you can take it when he strokes your gills, clumsy but interested, you’re overwhelmed. You’re too close to the edge and even though it feels like you’ve hardly had time to enjoy the heat of him he’s lashing into you strong and eager, clenching down hungrily all around your length, he’s so fucking there, so good, too good, and you’re pushed over the edge and spilling yourself out everywhere.

“You’re,” he pants, and he falters, slowing down, and his thumb smears wetly across your cheek, “...that was fast.” He sounds disappointed, hesitant, and he starts to pull out.

You squeeze his butt, hold him in place. “Try me when it’s not, hn, the asscrack’a noon, and I’ll show you fast,” you say, your voice a silly reedy wisp of itself, “Go on, go, you’re -- ahhh, yeah, keep -- _mnn!_ \-- yeah, good. Yeah.”

He keeps going, slower now, careful of how sensitive you are, of the way the aftershocks rattle your teeth. He treats you like something fine and fragile, he strokes your face till you thrum with the tenderness of it all. The savage, desperate boy who cut you up is entirely gone, in this moment, there’s just your best friend Karkat and you are so flush, so warm, so loved. Darkness is starting to steal in all around the edges of your vision and you’re purring, rolling your hips for that strange wonderful echo of pleasure and desire. You’re spent but you could never get tired of him touching you. 

He comes with a beautiful cry, half-muffled in the press of his lips against yours, the sound poured into your mouth as he pours himself between your legs. You stroke his back, careful of his gills, let him rock and squirm and whimper through his own aftershocks. The slime’s gone cloudy and slick, but you can hear the filters humming already, it’ll get taken care of. Everything’ll sort itself out.

Karkat sighs, finally, and rolls over to lie on his back beside you. His fingers lace between your own, palm to slimy palm, and he traces over your knuckles with his free hand. 

“How is this even going to work, you absurd bigot?” he says quietly. His voice has worn just as thin and reedy as yours. “All issues of culling aside, I’m a landdweller, dude, and you are a castist fucking prick.”

“You’re not,” you murmur, and you splay a hand over his gills. “And I’m not either, so fuck you, love. You’re a seadweller who got a mite lost, is all.”

“Don’t be cute,” he says tiredly. “I know what I am.”

“You’re special,” you say, and nuzzle the side of his face, where his fin-scars make you sad. “You’re perfect.”

“If I was a landdweller it’d be a step up,” he says morosely, and you nip the side of his mouth get him to shut it.

“You’re just fine the way you are,” you tell him, “though you could stand to be a pinch less bloody silly. And in any case Feferi’s hooked up in a kissin’ quadrant with Serket. If cavortin’ around with landhags is good enough for the Heiress I don’t see why any other seadweller --even one as fine-bred as me-- should turn their snout up at it. If you were a landdweller, which I am for sure and certain not conceding.”

“I _dwell_ on _land_ ,” he says, like he’s making a very clever argument.

“So do I,” you sniff. “My hivering’s part of an old mountain chain, you don’t get much more land than that. And I doubt Serket’s touched her ugly toes to shore since she bought that ridiculous caraval a hers.”

“Maybe we’re both landdwellers, then,” he says. 

“Bite your fuckin’ tongue,” you say, and use the last of your energy to roll him under the sopor. 

*

You wake before him, and don’t spend nearly long enough petting the slick dark mess of Karkat’s hair and watching him half-smile in his sleep before hunger pains get the better of you. Breakfast, you think. You’re ravenous and he’s likely to be worse, with a smaller frame and such a drastic illness. His gills look startlingly better, hardly puffy at all -- he might have gone down quicker than you’d ever dreamed possible but he’s rebounding like a champion, like magic. He might be fine as early as tomorrow.

You heave out of the slime, wipe dry with a somewhat dusty towel from a never-used linen closet that still smells like paint, and shake out fresh duds from your sylladex. 

You have to go three floors up to find any ingredients really properly worth the cooking, but you take them and the pans back to the pokey triangular mealblock. Karkat shouldn’t have to go hunt all over to find you and there’s something more to it, somehow, you feel a proud and irrational fondness for these two scrunched-up afterthought blocks you’d never thought you’d ever actually use. They’re like a sanctuary, maybe, a little piece of hive away from hive, hidden away safe all these sweeps just for this moment, this quiet evening. Everything’s falling into place. 

Karkat shuffles out, shower damp and in fresh clothes of his own while you’re plating up the eggs. 

“I was gonna bring yours to you in the ‘cupe,” you say, but he just waves vaguely at you and sits down. He is not evidently an evening person but he makes even this cute. 

“Ws’is?” he enquires. 

“Steak and eggs. The syrup’s in the silver pitcher, I didn’t know how much you like. Eat it before it gets cold.”

“S’lusus?”

“Go fuck yourself, love, don’t be gross. It’s just animal. Sealions like the rocks on the lee of my hive, I potted a few last week. They keep well.”

“Mmn.”

“I laid the eggs myself, though.”

He snorts. “You’re such a shit,” he says, almost clearly, and cautiously investigates the syrup pitcher. You turn around and start clattering the pans into the cleaning unit before you can blush too hard, or grin too broadly, or jump him. 

Your sylladex chimes at you, startling you out of your awkward reverie and you jump at the chance for another distraction, fumbling your palmpirate out and flicking it on. Behind you, Karkat makes a stuff-mouthed inquiring grumble. 

“It’s just Fef,” you tell, him, and then go still. 

CC: You know t)(at because of my )(emotype I can just countermand culling orders, rig)(t?    
CA: uh

Your brain is blank. You look over your shoulder at Karkat and when he sees you he tenses up, raises an eyebrow.   
“Wha?” he wants to know. 

CA: no fef i did not knoww that   
CC: W)(ale, now you do!   
CC: )(ow many times, exactly, did he kick your butt?

You stumble over to the table, sit heavily in a chair.   
“What,” Karkat says more insistently. 

CA: like sevventeen maybe i kinda lost count   
CA: fef wwhat the shell are you plannin    
CC: clam your )(eaving tits, Eridan, I got t)(is!

You can hear the foreign buzz of Karkat’s sylladex, and he pulls out his own husktop, a thick old clumsy thing, still wiggler-padded in spongy purple cartilage. His face is drawn and worried and there’s the kid that hurt you, in his drawn face and the level red-ringed stare he fixes you with, there’s the coiled killer. You know he could flip the table and be at your throat in an instant if Feferi doesn’t have this, if you’ve betrayed him after all. The scent of cooked meat makes you nauseous, all of a sudden, and the small creak of chitin as Karkat levers his husk’s lid open saws a warning at your pump strings. 

He looks at the screen and he goes slate as storms, colorless. You are so taut with fear and worry you can’t breathe, and then he turns the old purple husk around. 

On the screen is a registrar notification, all imperial crimson and tyrian like you got when you were upgraded to an Orphaner but instead of being about you it says: 

** ♋ Karkat Vantas, hemotype #000, aberrant hemostatus pardoned by reason of manifest martial value to the Empire.  **

You and Karkat sit there, shocked silent.

Your palmpirate buzzes again. 

CC: Now, you buoys bot)( betta live )(appily ever after, you )(--EAR??

Karkat starts laughing, hoarse and exhausted and helpless. You gather him into your arms and he pushes weakly at your chest, shaking like a leaf and laughing, laughing. You think of his secret crush on Terezi, you think of your long-cherished hopes for Feferi’s red quadrant, of her brilliant smile, of her bright eyes, of her buoyancy spheres. Karkat is warm and small and strange, and you know him, now, stem to stern. You saved him. When he kisses you he misses your mouth, the first few times, and his cheeks are damp-pink with tears. You hold him tight, and you kiss him fumblingly back until you get it right and you’re happy, you’re so happy, you are stupid with joy and he smiles like he’s just now figuring out how. 

Ignored, your breakfast grows cold. 

*  
 __  
Chasing those circles in the ground  
The same old shit is still the same old lie   
Just when you think you've got it down   
Watch it fly.  
\-- “Trouble”, Shawn Colvin.


End file.
